The same truth shows up differently depending on
where you are in the arc of your story.
THE THREAD: Giving yourself permission
At some point, almost every woman gets the same education about her body. It goes like this: this is normal and you can push through it. At the same time as the go-it-alone/suffer-in-silence message, we're also taught from an early age to ignore our instincts and listen to the "experts," a group that now includes a slew of wellness influencers on TikTok. If you've ever been told your exhaustion is anxiety or your anger is hormonal (meaning, not valid, or there's no data or ,ultimately, just move on) you know what we mean.
We get this education at home, at school, at the doctor's office. We get it from mothers who got it from their mothers. We get it now from strangers on TikTok telling us our symptoms are a cortisol problem that a morning routine will fix.
And we comply. We push through periods that should have been investigated (it takes, on average, about seven years for painful endometriosis to be diagnosed.) We apologize to partners for being moody during perimenopause. We sit in offices performing fine while our bodies are suffering through a miscarriage or postpartum depression. We ask almost anyone other than ourselves if our symptoms are normal because somewhere along the way we stopped trusting that we'd know.
Here's what Lādē Pops believes: your body has been right the whole time. The information was wrong. Not you.
🩸 If you're still cycling You've probably structured your life around your worst days without realizing it. Do you avoid making plans? Pre-dose ibuprofen? Call in sick? What if feeling good during your period wasn't a fluke, magically opening up a couple of days every month and eliminating that low-level dread feeling? The dread is not a given even though it got treated like one.
Follow: @thinx — not just a period underwear brand. Their feed has been one of the longest-running normalizers of talking about periods like adults. Worth following for the tone alone.
Things to try: Magnesium glycinate is the most evidence-backed non-pharmaceutical option for cramps and PMS mood. Not sexy but genuinely works. Brands like Thorne or Pure Encapsulations are clean.
🌀 If you're in the middle You've spent 20+ years managing your body through its cycles and now the rules are changing again. The permission here is different: you don't have to white-knuckle this transition. Thankfully there are tools that didn't exist for your mother or even your older sisters and aunts. Try some out and see how you feel.
→ Follow: @drmaryclaire — OB-GYN Dr. Mary Claire Haver. She has done more to move the needle on perimenopause literacy in the last two years than the medical establishment did in the previous twenty.
Things to try: Magnesium glycinate (again) because its genuinely useful for perimenopausal sleep disruption and mood.
🔥 If you're in the fire years The cultural narrative said the menopause chapter was about winding down. A lot of women on the other side report the opposite. A less bumpy hormonal landscape. Decades of experience and, for many women, the first real permission to be self-focused. Permission to claim that, loudly.
Follow: @tamsenf — Tamsen Fadal, former TV anchor who redirected her entire platform toward menopause advocacy. She's warm and has zero patience for the invisibility narrative.
Things to try: Soma Cool Nights sleepwear that is specifically engineered for night sweats, not just marketed toward it. Widely available.
READ OR LISTEN: Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski — the science of female physiology reframed as the science of desire. It will change how you understand your body in every phase.
You know someone in each of these stages. Please forward this along to her.